Aftermath
by Monday1113
Summary: [RP Based Drabble. Oneshot] Lloyd regrets trying to leave. He shouldn't be home. He shouldn't be around the others. Now, he's paying the price for trying to escape. (Implied abuse. Greenflame, but that's not really applicable, since they aren't currently 'together'. Mentions of paranoia about someone committing suicide)


**A short one-shot based off an RP I've been in for a while now.**

**Monday1113 does not own Ninjago (Have we established that yet?)**

* * *

Aftermath

Lloyd leaned against the bathroom wall, slowly sinking down to the floor. He was breathing deeply through his nose, clearing his head. Hot tears rolled down his face slowly, welling in his eyes, blurring his vision, before he closed his eyes. The tears slipped past, rolling down faster.

He blew it, he knew he did. He said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and he screwed up everything.

_'It's not...it's not right, Lloyd.'_

That voice was back, the one that took everything away from him, the one that led to all of this, telling him that this was wrong.

Those feelings he had?

Wrong.

The 'I love you' that he told him?

A lie.

Lloyd shook his head, trying to clear the thoughts.

_'I could say the same thing! You don't have to say stuff to mean it.'_

_'You're lying.' _Lloyd told the voice. _'You have to be. He said he'd never lie to me. He told me that when I was a kid!' _It silenced it, but he knew it'd be back. He had to live with him. Lloyd had to put up with him as his teacher. He'd force him to forget what Kai had told him.

That he loved him.

_'You don't have to say stuff to mean it!'_

That he'd wait for the day they could be together again.

_'He's not...right for you.'_

Footsteps came down the hallway towards him, and he stopped his tears, wiping the ones on his face away. Slowly, Lloyd turned away from them, the bathroom door leaning against the other wall from where Cole broke it down earlier.

"Lloyd," Cole said, his voice rough. "Zane's re-heating your food. Come on, you have to eat."

"Not hungry." He said tersely, glaring at the tile floor. It was Cole's fault Zane was having to reheat _anything_. If he had just let the subject go, they could have eaten their food in bitter silence.

Then Kai might still have been with them, eating with them.

"Lloyd, you can either come eat your food, or you can go straight to bed." He said, still a little angry. "We already moved your cot down to the cellar."

"I'm not sleeping down there." He said defiantly, crossing his arms. Lloyd dug his feet into the tile, pressing himself into the corner between the sink, and the wall. It would take a lot of work to dislodge Lloyd from there without him cooperating.

"You agreed not to argue. What happened to that?" Cole spat back at him. His words were venomous. He stood, blocking Lloyd's way out of the bathroom, favoring one side more than the other, his leg still hurting.

Lloyd went silent, angry at himself, at Cole, at Zane, at the world, at just about everything, and everyone.

Except Kai.

He couldn't be mad at him. Kai had tried so hard to keep them from separating them. He tried _everything_. He couldn't have done anything else to stop Cole and Zane.

Cole grabbed Lloyd's arm, wrenching him out of the tight space, and out of the bathroom. "Come on..." Without hesitating, he shoved Lloyd towards the table, forcing him to sit down across from Jay, who pushed his food around on the plate, head propped up by his hand. For once, he was silent.

_'They were best friends...'_ His mind reminded, weighing Lloyd's already heavy heart down further with guilt. _'You could have stayed put, and they'd be together, and you could have been alone..._

Zane set a plate in front of Lloyd. The plate was still steaming from its brief cooking in the microwave. Lloyd stared down at the plate, feeling the steam hit his face, and the chill that it left once it left, continuing to trail upwards.

Cole sat down with his own food, starting to eat it. "I don't know what you two think you're gonna do by not eating your food. Kai's staying out there until he learns better, and until Lloyd figures out that it was lust, and nothing more." He said through a mouth full of vegetables. "Now both of you, eat your food, and deal with it."

The youngest at the tabled glared at the plate of food, stabbing at the vegetables angrily.

"Like I told you, Lloyd. Time's the only thing that'll help you." Cole said, watching him jab at his food.

_'Like hell it is...'_

* * *

He sat on the edge of the bed, surprised that he hadn't been joking about the cellar. Lloyd looked around, eyes straining in the dark, trying to find any other way out, the door he had come in through was locked. Cole had made sure Lloyd knew it was. It had shut, and locked with a loud, crisp, click.

It was darker than he had expected._'Cole lied about that...it's pretty dark down here...' _Lloyd thought, his words sounding bitter in his head. Honestly, Lloyd wasn't surprised that Cole had lied to him. Blindly, his hands ran over the bed, and he looked for the edge of his blanket, pulling it back, before stopping.

There _had_ to be some way out of the dark cellar.

Sliding his feet off of the bed, and onto the floor, chilled, stone cold against his bare feet, he stood. Lloyd slouched, just enough so the tips of his fingers rested over the cot. Letting his fingers trail over the thick blanket, he made his way towards the wall. As soon as his toes could feel it in front of him, he placed his cold palms over the wall, walking around the room.

No doors, no interesting holes in the walls, no secret passages out.

Curling up in the corner, arms wrapped around his knees, he let his tears out.

This was serious.

A long time ago, the ninja had saved him from being in a cage once, but now, the cellar _was_ his cage.

* * *

A week passed.

And then another.

And another.

And those weeks turned into a month.

Then two.

Lloyd sat on his bed, the tops of his feet on the floor, toes curled under. Unraveling the bandage from around his wrist, he hissed in pain, re-wrapping it quickly. It wasn't as tight like they way Zane had done it, but it would do. Just as long as the bandage held the gauze against the long cut that wrapped around his wrist, stopping at the top of his hand. He'd be fine, just as long as the stitches stayed.

Cole said he deserved it.

That he deserved it for not being at the top of his game.

As the pain from the cut ebbed, he laid himself down. Eyes that once looked at everything with childish wonder had dulled. They stared out in the direction of the door, hollow and empty like old marbles, cast away into the gutter.

"Kai..." He mumbled softly, looking behind himself, as if Cole would show up and drag him out into the yard for more training if he heard, beating his skinny, and battered frame more for even _daring_ to utter the name of their distant teammate. "Where are you?"

Lloyd didn't know that miles away, in a chilled prison, Kai was asking the same thing.

* * *

Lying on his side, he stared out into the darkness, eyes dried from going so long without blinking. The sound of someone knocking forcefully against the door stirred him from his open-eyed haze of nightmarish images. Scrubbing at his face, he yawned, not getting up off his bed.

A loud _click_ echoed in the dark, musty cellar. Summer heat had gripped the air, even in the dank cellar which was under the ground. Even here, he was not free from the suffocating, sweltering day.

"Lloyd, Zane short circuited this morning." Jay called down, yawning, clear he had just woken up. "I have to fix him... I think he just overheated, and that must've caused it..."

The boy lying on his side, wearing only a pair of boxers didn't move.

"Kid, you're in luck. Because of Zane, you get the day off." Cole shot down at the boy, able to see the still form lying prone, back to the door. The sunlight coming through the kitchen window attempted to light up Lloyd's room, just lightly illuminating a chunk of too-long golden rod hued hair.

Lloyd still didn't move, sighing. He could feel the heat of the sun on his bare back.

"...Lloyd?" Jay asked, stomach clenching and twisting as the boy made no move to get up. The blue ninja was too far away to tell if Lloyd's chest was rising faintly as he breathed or not, and he swallowed, chewing his lower lip. _'Did he... He wouldn't, would he...?'_

Jay took off down the steep steps, stopping once he saw Lloyd breathing, still staring into the darkness, his eyes distant. He didn't realize he had held his own breath, until he exhaled in relief, seeing no blood or cuts on the pale, too slim teenager. "Lloyd...?" He asked again, moving so he was in the younger's line of sight, not really knowing if Lloyd was looking at him or not.

He blinked lazily. "Yeah...?"

"Just making sure you weren't dead." He said nonchalantly. "So are you coming out to greet another boiling summer day, or are you just going to lay there?"

He half shrugged. "I think I'm just going to get some sleep..." He mumbled, and it was clear that his throat was dry, like he had slept with his mouth open, like he hadn't been staying hydrated. Lloyd slowly closed his eyes, shutting the world out.

Shutting Jay out.

Jay sighed, going back up the stairs to start fixing Zane. "It's getting worse..." He mumbled, starting to check Zane's internal cooling systems. "He didn't even want to get up... He just wanted to sleep..."

With the nindroid shut off, there wasn't going to be anyone who would talk back to Jay, but he kept mumbling and talking to Zane as he worked.

"Zane...what if he...you know..." Jay mumbled, feeling sweat roll down his forehead. Even with several fans keeping the small room cool, it was still hot. The blinds were drawn, and everything was on full blast, trying to at least keep Zane's small quarter's cool enough to be safe for him when the rest of the house was like an oven.

"What if he kills himself?" Jay said, the words coming out choked, and strangled, sounding wrong.

Once again, the offline nindroid didn't respond.

Jay shook his head, running his fingers through his hair, trying to get it off his face. "He wouldn't...would he...?"

* * *

**This really didn't have much of a plot...but it was fun to write.**

**This is just to get people excited for a roleplay based fanfic that isn't up yet (nor am I writing it, so I have no idea when it'll be up. Think of this as an advertisement for it). It's a greenflame RP, but, as Kairi put it, _"It's a GreenFlame story, but it's not just about the couple and fluff-n-stuff, it's actually way more deep and complex than that and tells an actual tale rather than some fangirling fic."_**

**So if that sounds like something you'd like, keep an eye out for it! The (as many of you probably know) AMAZING KairiVenomus is writing it~**


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